'I assure you I was,' he protests, 'I am in a crowd now, may I not muse on the "absent face that has fixed" me.'
'No, certainly not, you ought to be thinking of me,' this in a slightly aggrieved tone.
'How do you know I wasn't,' gazing at her earnestly.
'I'm not absent,' and then Philippa seeing what might be implied, blushes a rosy red, and rising says, 'We must go back now, I promised Lord Helmdon this dance, and he'll never find me here. Ah! there he is.'
'Are you so anxious to dance with him?' asks Jimmy in a would-be indifferent tone.
'Yes, of course,' she replies, 'I like him so much, don't you?'
'Oh, yes,' replies Dalrymple with equal indifference. And so the evening wears on and Miss Seaton is congratulating herself at having eluded Captain Harkness, when she suddenly finds him standing before her.
'Won't you give me a dance?' he says in his suave tone. 'I have been trying to speak to you all the evening—'
'Have you?' she replies, and not knowing quite how to get out of it. 'You may have the next one if you like,' she says.
'May I really? Then I shall find you somewhere about here?'